I’m pretty positive it happened when everyone visited for Winterlude. My body has a tendency to incubate viruses for a long period of time, generally three weeks or so. Given that, this one’s right on the money. It also is no coincidence that the Pirate has it too. At least I have someone to commiserate with.

The housemates (Matt, the darling boyfriend, and Joel, our new roomie and pal from Scouts) are busy downstairs, playing Halo 3 with friends and otherwise being nerds. I came upstairs to get some of my freelance work done, and to have time alone with my DVD player and my blues.

…all that blue.

And the tissues, cannot forget the tissues. But seriously. It’s common knowledge that I have a general fascination for all things blue. I try to vary that as much as I can in my knitting, especially because when it comes to knitting, I -adore- a rainbow of colours. Still, though… I often fall back to at least some bit of blue.

Those are the projects-of-the-current-moment. But before that, I finished my Jaywalkers.

They were a fast, fun knit, and I would totally use Regia Canyon Color for another pair. Gorgeous yarn, gorgeous, simple colours. And, being such vividly-striped yarn, makes for GREAT Jaywalkers.

As soon as the second sock was cast off and the socks were put on my feet,  I cast on for the new pair of socks.

The first of a pair of Lighthouse Gansey socks, in the newest Knitty issue. I’ve waited for a basic, nicely-designed sock to use the Reynolds Soft Sea Wool I bought in Pittsburgh, and this sock fits the bill. Plus, Soft Sea Wool, Lighthouse Gansey… it all seems to fit well. In this case, the blue seems to be a good choice.

I should also mention that this yarn is so absolutely delicious to knit with. It’s extremely soft, has a beautiful amount of stretch, and, well, I adore it.  These will definitely be an enjoyable knit.

And yes, I -am- truly that pale. My skin white-contrasts right out of every closeup photo. I want to harness it as a talent, but have no idea how.

I made a small KnitPicks order last week, to get some Crayon for some toys I’m making. I decided to also pick up a skein of Wool of the Andes in the Mist colorway to swatch it for Rogue.

Rogue is going to be my first sweater attempt.  I’m nervous, because I’m fully aware that it’s not the easiest sweater to take on. However, I have done intricate cabling, and I have loved this hoodie ever since I first saw it. This yarn swatched up well for the in-the-round swatch, and I’m now knitting a flat swatch.

I also have to give mad love to Leanne for selling me an inexpensive set of Denise Interchangeables. I’ve been using them nonstop. They’re so comfortable and warm up really easily. <3  I’ve been using them to swatch for Rogue, as you can see.

I have the blues. But not entirely in a bad way.

Have an obligatory chinchilla.

In the meantime, knitting has been a bit slow, but on the uprise. Between beating illnesses and getting some profitable freelance work done, the time for knitting has been narrowed to movie-watching. Luckily, that was the Christmas gift of the year, so I had a lot of fodder.

I unearthed this gem for some nice mindless, but enjoyable knitting:

A simple basketweave scarf, knit in Rowan Felted Tweed in Whisper.

It’s a scarf I started a long while ago that sort of got buried. It would be nice to finish it in time to wear before winter is gone for good.

A few other things have found their way to the needles, too. The second Jaywalker is on its way…

I even achieved, without much effort at all, an identical cast-on.

The Jaywalker is the current “travelling” project.

The current “this takes up every fibre of my being” is sock designing.

It currently consists of using the leftover yarn from my Monkey socks to swatch up some lace designs, while I fill up graph paper with concepts and designs.

There was an offer from a lovely yarner for free yarn to make your pattern with, if the pattern gets posted on her website for sale (split profits). I figure it’s yet another awesome way to get my designer foot in the door, and an excuse to design really nice socks. Which I’ve been meaning to do for awhile. The process will probably take a while, since I want these to look really cool. I have a few sketched-out ideas, we’ll see what works out!

Firstly, how about a new sock.

This is a Jaywalker (natch) knit in Regia Canyon Color, in the Beach colorway. The RPM aren’t done yet. I enjoy switching up my socks a little so the monotony isn’t there when I return to the second sock.

Nothing beats a good Jaywalker.

I’ve also been at work on some babythings for my fast-incoming baby niece/nephew. I bought some nice corn fibre-based yarn for a baby bonnet or two…

Which is super soft and gender-neutral(although leaning towards girly). I’m most likely going to go with the Top-Down Baby Bonnet for them, as it’s easy and cute.

I’ve also started swatching for a new baby pattern all my own.

The photo sucks, but there really isn’t much to show yet, save for the color choice. The yarn is Patons Decor, a nice wool/acrylic blend that is both washable and soft. The green is foresty and cool.

I plan on doing a Vandyke Lace panel in three columns, but after all this swatching (there’s three so far) we’ll see how everything adds up. It’d be nice to add to the solid-colour baby blanket patterns out there. :)

Oh, and quite possibly the biggest news as of late. My good buddy Ethan happened to have a friend with an alpaca farm. And when said friend mentioned alpaca seconds, my good buddy Ethan figured he would suggest myself, the Pirate, and friend Janis as possible receivers of said fleece.

It came in on Monday. 8 pounds of it.

It is, of course, fresh off the animal, so there’s work to do. But I’m quite surprised; despite an obvious smell of farm animal (which doesn’t bother me in the least; I worked on a ranch for years) the fleece is in really good shape, and the natural colours are really gorgeous. I have one bag of Fandango(black) and three bags of mixed browns.

I’ll be spending the next little while learning how to clean and prepare it. If anyone has suggestions or helpful websites, please let me know!

Now, IMPORTANT NEWS

Knitting Pirate, my darling sister, has a new pattern published, and man, is it ever cool: Highwayman Armwarmers. (Here’s the Ravelry link for Ravelrers.)

I knit a pair and plan to live in them this fall.

They are super easy, but the cables make them fun and interesting. I would recommend a nice soft yarn on bamboo needles.

Yay Pirate! ARRRRRRR

(I’m a day late for Talk Like A Pirate Day. Oops!)

I turned to my trusty SnB Nation book, which I have to say, is an amazing resource for cool patterns(I’m using an edited version of the Bunny Hat for the monster hat) and an amazing resource for ways to alter patterns to gauge.

It’s the first time I’ve used a stitch/row ratio to determine the sizes everything had to be, and.. I think it’s going to work out. Which is exciting, because I do like this pattern.

I cast on for it yesterday, and have done three rows. I’ll post a photo when I’m through with a little more progress. The yarn is really soft, nice to knit with, and smells like the baby shampoo I used to wash it. Mmm. Photos will also follow of baby hat when I get more of it done. I need to draw up a little face to embroider onto it. I have a lot of scrap yarns I can use for that. I’ve been meaning to practice my embroidery.

Also, unraveled my Monkey sock, to start anew with the new pattern chart. I need to re-write the pattern to include the additional stitches.

Boring post today, apologies! Some photos and fun should follow in the next few days. This weekend is studytime, as exams are next week. I tend to intermingle studying and knitting to keep my sanity levels at a nice spot.

Doesn’t help that in going out for all-you-can-eat sushi yesterday, I missed out on my SnB. Augh! Next time, guys, promise.

Oh, also: Following in the footsteps of my knitting co-conspirator, the Pirate, I’ve set up an Etsy shop to use in the future. Any suggestions/thoughts on what I could sell? I have a few ideas floating around in my head that I need to write down before I forget.

Now I’m not recycling knitter, normally. In fact, this was the first time I’ve had the inkling to do so. But when I was browing the used items, I saw a good chunk of hand-knit sweaters. This one just… stuck out to me. It was so nice and clean, the wool hadn’t pilled at all, the colours looked so.. nice.

I couldn’t help but wonder if someone lovingly knit this for someone else, and that someone else wore it once, if at all. Regardless, what attracted me to it was the blue. It’s one of my favorite shades of blue, and the wool strands themselves are grey and blue, flecking together to make this realy nice slate colour. The red wasn’t too shabby, either, And there was plenty of it. I’m not one to wear ski sweaters…

So I began to frog it. Frogging Fair Isle requires a certain bit of Zen composure, but this person knew what they were doing and the weaving wasn’t too difficult to pull apart. I couldn’t help but feel a little bad as I was frogging, though.

I had pretty much convinced myself that this sweater was a by-product of the curse. That the curse had left this poor sweater to be picked up by someone who needed something warm and pretty to wear, and here I was with a full stash box, frogging it up to become a yet-to-be-completely-decided project.

But I kept going. The yarn was too nice.

Turns out I wound up with a lot more than I had bargained for, despite knowing the whole time that this was a big sack ski sweater. I wasn’t fond of the creamy white colour, so it was disposed of. The sleeves were also disposed of, and the remaining blue and red became 5 very crimped and kinked hanks.

This was very exciting, as it was the first time I’d ever done my own hanks (ghetto fabulous-like, using the back of a kitchen chair), and had to wash them. I quickly cleaned my kitchen sink to spotlessness and prepped my area for some very professional washing/drying.

Of course, living with two grown men gives little to be desired in terms if what one would call “professional” working space for their precious hobby. One does what she can.

The “wet” side. Freshly washed hank gets hung over the washing sink until it’s down to a slow drip. Then gets moved to the side with the dishcloth.

Dry-er hanks were migrated to the dishcloth on the stove. Given there were only five hanks, I may have overthought some of this process. It worked well, in that while they were getting a lot of the initial water out, a lot of the kinks had worked themselves out.

I wasn’t sure how well the washing would work out the kinks. It’s still a bit crimped, but much better. Though I greatly desire a camera that isn’t 2.0 megapixel -digital- zoom for reasons like these, you can sort of make out the blue and grey flecks in the wool, in some of these photos.

Once the hanks were all on a slow drip, I set up my even-more-professional hang-to-dry system in a nook of the closet in the spare room.

Four towels beneath them, and there they shall sit until tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’ve decided that I would like to use it to knit a vest. One of those nice vests with a cable or somesuch in it, to go underneath a plain blouse, of which I have several that would match this colour blue, lucky! Currently I’m in a debate between Alison Hansel’s Leftovers pattern (with a possibly-added argyle pattern or something otherwise professional and interesting using that deep red, which would look neat), and Amy King’s Boogie pattern (seeing as it has some lovely cables that I did say I wanted, and is knit on 6mm straights – less cost for needles than leftovers).

And yet I’m still having trouble focusing on babythings. I think first on the list will be a cute brown bunnyhat, using the SnB Nation pattern. I have a nice cotton/wool blend yarn that is a tan-brown colour, perfect for a little non-gender-specific bunny.

In fact, I might cast on for that tonight. All this yarn preparation has me itching to knit.